...an award-nominated Irish blog on Irish history and Irish politics-from today and yesterday:all 32 Counties !Updated a number of times each week . (Mirror site here)

Monday, April 23, 2007

WHICH WAY FORWARD IN THE FREE STATE....... ?

In the wake of Sinn Fein successs in the North , republicans are increasingly having to confront the problem of building a realistic strategy for the very different political situation that exists in the 26 Counties . In this controversial analysis , Sinn Fein ard comhairle ('National Executive') member Paddy Bolger , argues that the Sinn Fein concept of an 'Economic Resistance Movement' , put forward in 1971 and expanded eight years later , is seriously over-optimistic , and that the national question remains the central revolutionary issue on which Free State workers can be mobilised in a painstaking and gradualist approach . From 'IRIS' magazine , November 1983 .

How can we make progress , then , given that we rule out (as in commonsense we must) revolutionary armed struggle in the Free State , and given that economic and social circumstances are not hopeful ?

I believe that the central economic question in Irish history is the national question : sometimes in the South the national question can be lost sight of by republicans who see the ending of partition as a future goal to be accomplished by building a mass republican organisation on social issues . In fact , apart from its centrality to Irish political life , the 'national question' is the only question in the Ireland of today with a revolutionary political potential .

And so , while we cannot fail to be socialists in all areas of work identified in the economic resistance programme in 1979, we may err too far in a direction that is only superfically revolutionary unless the 'national question' is at all times kept to the fore.......(MORE LATER).

To the left of the Party there have been several campaigns since 1969 committed to British withdrawal from Ireland : in the early 1970's there was the Anti-Internment League, which was superceded in 1976 by the Troops Out Movement (TOM). Geoff Bell concludes that " ...the inability of TOM to build the 'mass campaign' it hoped for was due to the hostile environment it had to work in.."

This is obviously true , but it did not prevent a powerful anti-war movement materialising in the United States at the time of Vietnam: however that may be , by 1980 these forces had shifted their attention to the Labour Committee on Ireland (LCI) which operates essentially within the British Labour Party....... (MORE LATER).

GLOSSARY OF THE LEFT IN IRELAND : FROM 1960 TO 1983.......These notes attempt to record the left-wing organisations which have existed in Ireland since 1960 . No attempt has been made to record purely local organisations outside Dublin and Belfast , or microscopic groups which never reached double figures . The larger organisations have been presented in more detail .From 'GRALTON' magazine, 1983. By John Goodwillie.(NOTE : Links in the following article are as accurate as possible - not all the groups mentioned left a discernible 'footprint' .)